Notes from the Road

It’s frustrating that the public don’t seem to have enough information to make a good judgement. I’ve heard about statistically improbable differences between exit polls and the returned vote count, but here is the most detailed and damning discussion of the topic I’ve ever seen – reported in Rolling Stone in June.

The article by Robert F Kennedy Jr. presents data indicating that a variety of mechanisms were used to disenfranchise voters in Ohio – and it indicates that the errors almost exclusively favoured the Republicans at the expense of the Democrats.

I wish I really knew. It’s not much of a democracy if we tolerate this kind of thing.

The world is changing fast, and it’s tough to keep up. www.netvibes.com is one of the great tools I’ve found recently. They let you create a custom home page on the web that contains lots of feeds from the sites that interest you, of course along with the ubiquitous and de rigeur Google search bar.

RSS feeds are the way to keep up with the news – and with NetVibes you can build your own real-time newspaper. There’s lots of information around on what RSS is and how to use it: here’s one from CNET.

You can also use NetVibes to watch your Google Mail.

President Bush is at it again. Not surprising, of course, he needs to defend his choices even if they were wrong ones. The latest example of faith leaping headlong over logic was from his 9/11 speeches reported here.

“We will not leave [Iraq] until this work is done. Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone,” Mr. Bush said. “They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”

The illogic is the idea that war in Iraq brings peace to the US. This is such patent nonsense it’s hard to credit it even being said.  Not only is the war in Iraq hardening Islamic hearts towards America (and Britain, among others), it’s also failing to create peace in that country, let alone ours. And Iraq is not in fact the only, or the main place where Al Quaeda is active. The focus on Iraq smacks of a personal vendetta. If peace and safety for Americans is really the goal, let’s see a much more balanced approach:

• defend against terror wherever it’s found
• build alliances to increase communication and understanding
• use aid as a compassionate tool to reduce inequality across the globe
• don’t use the terror word as a label for people we don’t like – keep it for those who truly fit the bill.

This controversial piece was written to try to counteract the black-and-white, good and evil, freedom versus terrorist rhetoric that abounded following the 9/11 attacks. Now several years on, I think it still has merit. We see the US and other governments spending enormous resources on war, creating enormous pain and division, while there are many humanitarian causes that would not only have benefited directly from those funds, but that would go some way to building bridges between East and West, Christian and Moslem. It is deeply disappointing that fear and anger continue to prevail, where in truth compassion – and compassionate action – seems much more likely to create sustainable progress.

Attending Aurora Theater’s marvelous “Saint Joan” last week in Berkeley, I was struck by the parallels between the life of this fifteenth century warrior and our current nemesis in Afghanistan. Joan of Arc was a religious extremist who believed that God gave her precise instructions, independent of the advice of the established church or civil government. She also spoke of “France” and “England” in a day when both land masses were ruled in haphazard fashion by feudal lords. (more…)

This was written for a US publication called “Spinsheet” that serves the yachting community. Following the attacks on New York and Washington, the paper asked readers to contribute their thoughts. With September 11th approaching again, I thought it was worth reprinting. Here’s what I wrote.

Sailing connects me with the planet, and with all the peoples of the world. It is easy to forget in these difficult times that the US is not the center of the universe, and that we are not the only people to have suffered a terrorist attack or to have lost innocent citizens in recent years. Yet every time we climb into a boat, and head away from the dock, we are physically connected, through the seas that surround the globe, to our fellow-travelers across the world. (more…)